Word: primed
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...make big decisions on its own. Still not content with that, the opposition pushed for control of Lebanon's telecommunications system, which would give Hizballah added operational security from Israeli intelligence - but could also help it hamper the activities of the U.N. tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. That tribunal has implicated Syrian officials in the killing, and much of its evidence comes from telephone records. Though Hizballah has denied wanting to derail the investigation, such pressure on its patron could disrupt the flow of weapons over the Syrian border to the Shi'ite group...
...hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night on Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Middle East peace process. The Israeli leader's refusal to abide by Washington's demand for a complete freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - and the Palestinians' refusal to enter talks without one - has left the Obama Administration's plans in tatters, with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas threatening to resign...
...Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged to abide by the Iraqi constitution and "normalize" Kirkuk by removing the tens of thousands of Arab Iraqis settled there by Saddam as part of an ethnic-cleansing campaign in the 1980s. After such normalization, according to the constitution, Kirkuk - and other areas with large Kurdish populations in four Iraqi governorates - should then hold a referendum to determine whether they should continue to be administered by Baghdad or be ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government. It may have been constitutionally mandated, but the idea of forcibly resettling Kirkuk's Arab population was unthinkable...
...easy. Obama will have to do much better than he did when trying to win Russian support for Chicago's Olympic bid: he called Putin two days before the crucial vote, when Moscow was already committed to Rio, and offered nothing in return to the rather unsentimental Russian Prime Minister. Sadly, this too little, too late approach to Moscow on Iran's nuclear program may force the Administration to make precisely the decision it hopes to avoid: between a nuclear Iran and a new and dangerous war in a critical region...
...recently elected Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, in his historic win, pledged to lessen the burden for local Japanese residents caused by the presence of the U.S. military, sparking fears that Japan would no longer be a steadfast ally in the military realm. The American military presence on Okinawa has been a sore spot in U.S.-Japan relations for decades because of its perceived negative social and economic effects on local communities. Okinawa is home to about two-thirds of the total 47,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan. The 2006 agreement was pushed along following a 1996 conviction...